Joseph Noel Paton

Sir Joseph Noel Paton FRSA, LL. D. (13 December 1821 – 26 December 1901) was a Scottish artist, illustrator and sculptor. He was also a poet and had a deep seated interest in, and knowledge of, Scottish folklore and Celtic legends.

He was born in Wooer's Alley, Dunfermline, Fife, on 13 December 1821 to Joseph Neil Paton and Catherine MacDiarmid, damask designers and weavers in the town. He is the brother of the sculptor Amelia Robertson Hill and the landscape artist Waller Hugh Paton. He also had one brother, Archibald, and two sisters, Catherine and Alexia, who all died in childhood; Paton erected a monument on the grave of his parents and dead siblings in later life, the grave was probably originally unmarked. It lies on the north side of Dunfermline Abbey and is a distinctive red granite Celtic cross amongst other smaller sandstone markers.

Paton attended Dunfermline School and then Dunfermline Art Academy, further enhancing the talents he had developed as a child. He followed the family trade by working as the design department director in a muslin factory for three years. Most of his life was spent in Scotland but he studied briefly at the Royal Academy, London in 1843, where he was tutored by George Jones. While studying in London Paton met John Everett Millais, who asked him to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In 1858, he married Margaret Gourlay Ferrier and the couple had eleven children (seven sons and four daughters). Their eldest son, Diarmid Noel Paton (1859–1928), became a regius professor of physiology in Glasgow during 1906 while another son, Frederick Noel Paton (1861–1914), was appointed as director of commercial intelligence to the government of India in 1905 but was also a noted illustrator.

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